Recovery Act

Unraveling neural circuitry involved in visual attention

Associate Professor of Psychology Anna Wang Roe has received $565,000 from the from the National Eye Institute and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to support studies of the organization of an area of the brain involved in visual attention and to investigate how the brain encodes tactile information. These studies will add to understanding of the neural circuitries underlying tactile behavior and attention and will have clinical relevance for recovery of function from stroke and development of tactile prosthetics. Roe and her colleagues will employ a range of techniques, including optical imaging, voltage-sensitive dye imaging, functional MRI, single unit recording and anatomical tracing methods to address these questions.